philosofik dadhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com
The Adventures of a Stay-At-Home DadSun, 18 Feb 2018 22:25:12 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngphilosofik dadhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com
Poopsplosionhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/poopsplosion/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/poopsplosion/#respondWed, 30 Dec 2015 07:31:37 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=855I realized it’s been a while since I wrote about poop, so I obviously felt I should rectify that straight away. This really should go without saying, but just in case, I do not recommend eating whilst reading this.

If you have little kids, you have poop everywhere. Maybe not all the time, but there will be a collection of moments when your entire day stops because one (or more!) of your children has pooped in a place where poop oughtn’t be, and to you falls the task of restoring those places to their pre-poop state. Normally, all this pooping occurs in a diaper. One can argue that poop most certainly ought to be in a diaper, and given the numerous alternatives, this is preferable to most. But when the convenience of not having to clean poop off the floor/couch/sibling requires cleaning the poop off of the pooper, these preferences become the splitting of hairs. While all of this becomes a routine to which we become alarmingly accustomed, there comes a Poopsplosion to which one cannot be accustomed and for which one cannot be fully prepared.

The Poopsplosion is exactly what it seems. This is one of those cases where the hyperbole neatly intersects with reality and the reality seems hyperbolic to the point of incredulity. Ask any parent and he can tell you of each child’s Poopsplosion. This event is cataclysmic in both the violence and dispersement of the poop, so much so that it ingrains itself upon your memory in the same way that its smells ingrain themselves upon your sinuses. Each child usually only has one in his lifetime, under normal circumstances,* so this really does become a permanent memory, forever filed in the brain’s archive of horrors to relive as you try to fall asleep, right alongside crippling self-doubt and genuinely considering the possibility that Donald Trump may become the President of the United States of America.

Joshua’s Poopsplosion was mercifully (or not) contained by footie pajamas. While this kept us from having to hose/burn down his room, there was at least a moment’s debate as to whether or not Joshua himself was salvageable. Imagine, if you will, a pair of women’s stockings. Now imagine pouring warm pudding into those stockings. Now imagine putting your legs in them. This is how we found Joshua on the day of his Poopsplosion, hip-deep in his own filth, effectively clad in what could only be described as a “Poop Suit.” His bath was immediate and vigorous. Those PJs were, I assume, destroyed. I don’t really remember, as my task was to sandblast bathe Joshua while Jen handled the clean-up duty (dooty?) in his room. While his PJs did an admirable job of containing the poo, damned if Joshua didn’t wear some breathable fabrics through which moisture could pass. And pass it did. Onto his bed and his stuffed friends, as if he’d poured a pitcher of acrid tea on everything he owned. He and his room were, eventually, cleaned and sanitized, but the same cannot be said of my long-term memory.

Jack’s Poopsplosion happened today. I woke him up at his usual time, which is to say that I entered his room to find that he had begun his twice-daily routine of pulling all his books off their shelves and his clothes out of his dresser. But, as a new wrinkle, I discovered that he had pooped on all of it. His diaper, already at capacity from his 11-ish hour nighttime slumber, was the overworked levee before the hurricane that came out of his derrière. It had no chance at all. His sheets, pillows, blankets, clothes, and stuffed friends all looked like they’d been deployed in the Battle of the Somme, so thoroughly caked in excrement had they become. They moved swiftly to the laundry room and Jack — poor, poor Jack — was scrubbed hard enough to have easily removed every last cell of his epidermis. For you see, this is knowledge that adults with grown-up levels of personal hygience lack — dried poop is slightly harder than concrete, and among the stickiest** substances known to modern science when allowed to dry on human skin.

Mother Nature did not design the human body to poop on itself. She wants that waste out and away, literally putting it behind us so we don’t even have to see it. The Poopsplosion is her way of telling us that what we are doing to our children is unnatural. Mother Nature cannot be contained.

*If they’re sick or trapped in a carseat for six hours or going commando because of a previous incident for which you were regrettably unprepared, the Poopsplosion can repeat, but at least you know it’s a possibility going in. A true Poopsplosion cannot be predicted.

**The stickiest substance I’ve ever come across is an unknown brand/model of construction adhesive used to secure a countertop to the kitchen wall in our old house in lieu of traditional fasteners. This adhesive was so strong that my wife stood upon this countertop and jumped on it to try to get it off said wall. She was unsuccessful. Dried poop is similar, but it smells worse.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/poopsplosion/feed/0philosofikElmer Fudd and The Pirate Astronomerhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/elmer-fudd-and-the-pirate-astronomer/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/elmer-fudd-and-the-pirate-astronomer/#respondThu, 10 Dec 2015 06:32:41 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=847Joshua has had a speech impediment for a while now. It’s not Daffy Duck-level, closer to Elmer Fudd, really, but it hasn’t corrected itself or shown any improvement at all. So we’re starting speech therapy soon.

Speech impediments don’t have to be obstacles to career or personal success. Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Prize despite sounding like he’s talking with a mouthful of salt-water taffy. Jimmy Stewart basically turned his speech impediment into an acting career. Moses — yes, that Moses — talked to God Himself with a self-admitted speech impediment. It’s obviously not an easy thing to deal with, but the point is that it can be dealt with.

Joshua’s issue is an inability to articulate Rs, Ls, and Ws clearly. They all sound the same, but whatever they sound like is neither R, L, nor W. We’re not really sure how it came to be. My mother supposes that his allergies to The World kept his head stuffed up to the point that he couldn’t hear those sounds clearly when he was learning to speak. I can’t say she’s wrong because Joshua isallergic to life itself, so who knows? Whatever its origin, it is here to stay.

Next week, he’ll meet with a speech pathologist, or maybe a speech therapist. I’m sure that somebody with some free time can Google the difference between a speech pathologist and a speech therapist, but I don’t know it and I’m perfectly happy believing that they’re the same.* Whatever this person’s title, he will be voluntarily** walking into the verbal buzzsaw that is Joshua’s endless patter. I have a great deal of sympathy for this person, as talking with Joshua is the conversational equivalent of Death By A Thousand Cuts.

It’s parental love that brought us to this point — the point at which we are seeking to help Joshua talk better. Of course the fear is that this parental love will become outright masochism in helping Joshua to talk more. Still, off we go.

Jack, has slowly been finding his own voice. What he lacks in vocal precision, he makes up for in enthusiasm. He has recently discovered words that end with -ar. “Star” and “car” are two of his favorite words. Amusingly, his emphasis on that “ar” sound is absurdly heavy, making him sound like a pirate posing as a used car salesman.***

The contrast between Jack’s hyperbolic, manic Rs and Joshua’s velvety, nebulous Rs is stark. It’s like hanging out in the hot tub for twenty minutes then jumping into the pool — your body is shocked right down to your soul by what is suddenly no longer present. It’s my hope to soon experience this in reverse once Joshua’s Rs emerge from the mists.

* My guess: they are the same, but the speech pathologist didn’t like that “therapist” looks like “the rapist” if you read it too quickly.

**Well, ok, he’s getting paid. And that’s for the best.

***Yes, that’s redundant

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/elmer-fudd-and-the-pirate-astronomer/feed/0philosofikCar-pe Diemhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/car-pe-diem/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/car-pe-diem/#respondFri, 11 Sep 2015 04:56:45 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=816When Joshua was born, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children sit in a rear-facing car seat until their first birthday. Shortly before his first birthday, they changed their recommendation to two years, rather than one. We kept our 5th-percentile-for-height-and-weight toddler in his car seat as long as we could, but even his runty legs were too long to be contained in the car seat cocoon until his second birthday. So, being the Worst Parents Ever* that we are, we turned him around to face the world.

For Jack, we knew his timeline was bound to be short, as he seems bound to be tall.** A couple of weeks ago, my mom generously bought Jack a new car seat so that he could face forward and no longer enjoy the view of the back seat over the tops of his knees. It’s a fine car seat and he genuinely likes it. However, the seat has some green trim on it which only further drives his appearance into leprechaun territory. But he gets to look out the window for a change, so he’s a happy leprechaun.

One of the Parenting Techniques of Last Resort for crying infants is a ride in the car. I never knew what, exactly, about riding in car lulled the little pre-people to sleep, but I also didn’t ask a lot of questions, gift horses and all that. It wasn’t a tactic we used often — maybe a half-dozen times total for both kids — but it was nice to have the option. However, we were grounded a bit once we realized that, for both our kids, going from rear-facing to forward-facing negated this tactic. I guess the thrill of watching the world go by behind a pane of tempered glass is just too much excitement to pacify an agitated kid. Once they started looking out the windshield, their in-car naps came to an end.

Both our kids, when rear-facing, would frequently nod off by the time we got home from errands or dinner or whatever, provided we were within an hour or so of their regular bed or nap times. This didn’t disrupt their nightly sleep routines too much, but it was ruinous for their naps. Even if they only slept ten minutes in the car before nap time, their little bodies decided that was their nap. And there was hell to pay.

Of course, physical comfort and psychological comfort are different. They’re as physically comfortable as pre-people can be whilst strapped into a 5-point harness. But physical comfort is not their only concern. There must be music. Joshua’s musical tastes are, in a word, fickle. He has a collection of CDs to which he listens exclusively, outright mocking our satellite radio subscription. One of these CDs is a rather clever one. It’s a collection of nursery rhymes set to music, but done so within the framework of a narrative about Jack and Jill, Georgie Porgie, and Mary Mary (nee Contrary) who are all on their way to Old King Cole’s birthday party. Ok, when I write it down, it doesn’t sound especially clever, but it’s not bad, as kid’s music goes. After the, oh, one-billionth time through this CD, the novelty has worn off. Joshua likes this CD, along with a few others similarly featuring nursery rhymes and old campfire songs and the like. He recently latched onto a CD by They Might Be Giants, a gift from his aunt and uncle. And while this is head and shoulders above the others***, it’s still quickly transitioning from Music I Actively Listen To to white noise.

Jack, mercifully, has no musical preferences yet. Or if he does, he’s so far unable to articulate them.**** Nonetheless, I know that there is a future more near than distant in which my kids cavil over precisely which recording of “John Brown’s Body” should come next in the queue. This will probably result in me forcing them to listen to selecting for them some choice tracks from the not-deep-enough catalogue of The Cranberries. In a few years time, they’ll be A) excellent at working together to make decisions, B) walking/bicycling everywhere they go, or C) big fans of The Cranberries.

From time to time, some people have been unfortunate enough to have needed or opted into a ride in our car, Most were skilled beyond their years in concealing their alarm at the, shall we say, “lived in” condition of our car. I have been in cars of parents with two or more children. Somehow, they keep their cars looking cared for, even clean. Our car looks like a parliament of owls just moved out. There are discarded milk jugs, Joshua’s innumerable letters and drawings of letters, Jack’s crumbs, trash from this and that and those. I suppose those other parents clean their vehicles. I’m happy for them, truly, but how they manage this feat while tending to pre-people is still cloaked in the shadows of mystery to me. I find that, after a day out with the boys, when we return home, I am content, if not ecstatic, to just get them out of the car and into the house, to make no mention of the detritus of their car ride entertainment. After a few days of this, a small layer of stuff has accumulated on the floorboards. After a few weeks, the car resembles a sort of rolling dumpster with seats. After a few months, it looks like the ground of the Midway on the last day of the carnival. I no longer recall with certainty the color of the floor mats in the back seat, or if I ever switched to them from the mud mats from last winter. Because, you know, I was concerned last winter with keeping the car clean.

*There seems to be a point of pride among parents in how long they were able to keep their kid(s) facing backward. Somewhere out there, a mom is driving her tweens around, still forced to stare out the back window, convinced she is protecting them.

**Tall is a relative condition. Jen is among the tallest of her family at a towering 5’4″. Similarly, my 5’9″ frame loomed over my parents and grandparents. We’re just hoping that Jack doesn’t end up taller than his older brother before they’re finished growing. That’s just sad.

***This in itself lends credence to the notion that they might, in fact, be giants.

****Or his name. Or his basic needs and wants. He really needs to start talking.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/car-pe-diem/feed/0philosofikI Got No Time for the Jibba-Jabbahttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/i-got-no-time-for-the-jibba-jabba/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/i-got-no-time-for-the-jibba-jabba/#respondFri, 14 Aug 2015 18:38:59 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=813When Joshua was a year old, plus a few months, Jen and I got worried because not only was he not talking, but he’d stopped using the handful of words he’d already learned. We talked to his pediatrician who suspected it wasn’t anything to worry about, but referred us to a neurologist for further testing, almost certainly to assuage our fears, if not our insurance company.

The test was a sleep test of sorts, or at least a test administered to Joshua whilst he was sleeping. Since most one-year olds don’t always sleep on command, the neurologist gave us some instructions in order to, basically, deprive Joshua of sleep to the point that he’d conk out almost immediately in the doctor’s office. We weren’t supposed to let him nap the day before, or at least not very much. We were also supposed to keep him up late and wake him up early so he’d be as cranky sleepy as possible. And so, with our child zombified, we took him to the neurologist’s office.

Joshua, at that time, occupied the bottom fifth percentile for height and weight, so he was pretty small, relatively speaking. But when he was strapped into a huge bed with electrodes all over his noggin, and only his tiny, twiggy arm sticking out of the blanket, he looked even smaller. It was in this sad state that we had to leave him as they did whatever doctoring they did.

A little while later, we got him back, took him home for a For Serious Nap, and waited for the neurologist to send the test results back to Joshua’s pediatrician. Those results confirmed the pediatrician’s suspicion — nothing was wrong with Joshua, and he’d talk sooner or later.

This is my preface to talking about my eldest son’s inability to Shut The Hell Up. He talks nearly constantly, from the moment he wakes up until the moment we close the door to his bedroom as he still chatters away at his poor stuffed companions who must endure at least another fifteen minutes of verbal vomit before Joshua passes out, presumably from the exhaustion at having spoken, mostly without interruption, for twelve consecutive hours.*

Joshua has several preferred topics of conversation — the alphabet, numbers, the lives of his aforementioned stuffed friends, and story-telling. The kid is a bit sheltered. It is the latter-most category which gives me the most consternation. His stories meander in the way a Roomba cleans a floor, bouncing in unpredictable, senseless paths from one point to another. Except, a Roomba leaves your floor clean while Joshua… well, Joshua accomplishes the opposite as he absent-mindedly fiddles with anything not bolted to the floor or wall.

On particularly trying days, when Joshua hits the 45-minute mark of telling me A Story, lacking both purpose and plot, I try to remember him strapped into a hospital bed, looking impossibly fragile and minute because we were afraid he wasn’t talking enough. Perspective, man. It’s everything. Today’s story began as I was shaving, and continued for nearly an hour until we had all gotten dressed, into the car, and driven to buy some school supplies at a store about twenty minutes away. I tried, I really did, to pay attention to the story. There was just so much of it. It’d be like trying to digest the Old Testament in one sitting. It’s just a lot. I know that his Cliffords and Murray** were building letters out of Materials, that those letters were to be used on a playground, that inclement weather forced them indoors (apparently they’d been making letters outside), but then there was a flood, but the flood didn’t reach Christopher Robin’s house (he’s been on a Milne kick lately), so everyone got on a boat and sailed down the river, and then…. Well, I just don’t know. That was all before we got in the car. By the time he finished his story, I’d driven in traffic and lost the tenuous thread of a plot that connected the disparate events of his tale. He didn’t notice.

I love my boy. I truly do. He’s a great kid, even if he can’t stop talking. In the meantime, his brother, Jack, is not talking. Not really, anyway. He’s got a few words, but he hasn’t really had that Ah-Ha! moment when his brain gets everything lined up and more words come out of his mouth than grunts. For Joshua, it was just a waiting game. He talked eventually. Obviously. Endlessly. Jack may never talk. Not because he won’t know how, but because he won’t have a chance. When the airwaves are as congested as they are, there’s just no bandwidth available for an amateur radio enthusiast to make his first broadcast amid 700 stations broadcasting top, middle, and bottom 40s hits from today, yesterday, and, somehow, tomorrow. I feel bad for Jack. He seems like he’s got things he wants to say, but if he’s waiting for his moment, we might not hear him speak until Joshua goes to college.

A kind lady standing on line behind us as the store not long ago overheard Joshua’s ceaseless prattle. She warmly told us that her oldest was the same way, and that her youngest didn’t talk in earnest until he was about four years old. As she put it, “Why talk yourself when you have someone to talk for you?” So it goes for Jack.

And, at this rate, me.

*After reading that sentence, you’re probably starting to wonder if he gets it from me.

**Long-time readers may recall that Murray is Joshua’s stuffed zebra who once had a bit of gender confusion and went by the name, Mary.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/i-got-no-time-for-the-jibba-jabba/feed/0philosofikStaycate the Premiseshttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/800/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/800/#respondTue, 28 Jul 2015 17:19:03 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=800The summer holidays with kids are rough. Generally, I’m speaking of Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, but summer as a whole is pretty lame, too. Personally, I loathe hot weather; my ideal summer would probably be spent in the Yukon or Siberia. (I hear the permafrost is just lovely in July!) This heat aversion extends to the kids, too, because our pre-people aren’t all that great at hot, either. Jack is both a toddler with an under-developed ability to thermo-regulate and a ginger. He’s pretty much screwed. Joshua fares a little better as he can sweat and be exposed to sunlight for more than a few minutes without combusting. But the heat still saps him of the ability/will to exist. A few weeks ago, I had to carry him up the hill from our dock because he was tired from sitting under an umbrella and coloring while it was 83 degrees outside.

Beyond the heat and the sun, both of which are justifiable reasons for being a hermit between Memorial Day and Labor Day*, there are the crowds. I don’t do well with people. I’ve got some social anxiety issues which are whatever, but I also just don’t like trying to navigate crowded spaces, especially with kids. It was better when Jack used a stroller more. Then I could use it to plow indiscriminately through the masses. But now that he prefers to toddle on his own, I have to select with care our destinations based on factors including stairs (the four steps from our sidewalk to our front door take him no less than three days to climb; it’s basically his Everest), the likelihood of encountering other people (almost a given; the zombie apocalypse can’t come soon enough for my liking), and the presence of Dangers (when you’re one year old, this is pretty much everywhere). This rules out the beach, amusement parks, most museums, restaurants, baseball stadiums, the Out-of-Doors, and much of the In-of-Doors.

There’s an argument to be made that it’s good to take kids to these places when they’re crowded. This way they learn how to interact with people in large numbers. The issue is that I am their Life Coach when Jen is working. And as I’m rubbish at dealing with people in large numbers, there’s no lesson they can learn from me on the subject except that trying to look cool while standing in a corner whilst quietly sobbing isn’t really possible.

Joshua’s streak of independence now runs strong, so he wants to do things for himself. Ordinarily, I plan extra time into all of our activities to account for him 1) wanting to do things on his own, and 2) being slow as hell at doing things on his own. Sometimes it’s just not possible because we have the rest of our lives to continue on with, but I do try to give him time when I can. This is another practice which does not scale up to places with large crowds. For example, we went to the mall a few weeks ago to get him some new socks. If I were to go by myself, or even with just Jack in a stroller, this would take about ten minutes. Instead, with Captain I-Do-It-Myself, we were at the mall for three hours. Thirty minutes of that was him telling me that he didn’t want to buy new shoes (which we were not there to do), ten minutes was the actual purchasing of socks, and the rest of the time was spent walking around looking for all the letters of the alphabet.** Walking around isn’t an especially taxing activity, but walking around with a five-year old when surrounded by people two feet taller and four times heavier*** is slightly less stressful than a Doughboy sticking his head up above a trench. Walking with Joshua must be what it’s like to take a walk with a crow. They’re both easily and constantly distracted by and attracted to shiny objects, skittish of loud noises, and prone to picking food up off the floor.

Jack is a time bomb. He’s a fun and cuddly little boy, still covered with enough baby fat to make him a bit squishy. But in the sun, he’s all ginger, and even with sunscreen, his skin will go from pasty to burnt pastry with terrifying speed. Ten minutes has to be added to the start of any trip outside. It takes five minutes to put on the sunscreen and another five to catch him and hold him because, when his smooth skin is freshly lubed, he’s as close to frictionless as a thing can be. A secondary timer counts down the time until he will decide that he has had enough of being awake. Rather than just falling asleep in his stroller (I miss those days already), he will instead yell, whine, cry, and scream about how not asleep he is. This will happen around lunch time, or sooner if there’s a lot of stimulation (that stupid mall), so working the timing of Joshua needing three hours to buy socks and Jack needing less than three hours in a public place is just gosh-darn exciting.

Because I dislike both heat and people, I eschew vacationing in the summer. The aforementioned issue of kids only reinforces this for me. My parents were Summer Beach people. We went every year to the same hotel at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My memories of the place mostly involve the beach being hot, the TV having not enough cartoons, and a plethora of themed restaurants where you can both eat and reenact the Battle of Gettysburg or the Battle of Agincourt all at the same time. I’m sure I had fun, because kids excel at having fun even when there isn’t much fun to be had. But on the parent side now, I get that my parents were just trying to escape the crush of reality, even though bringing a kid along is basically just bringing a big money hole which will probably make the debt that goes along with reality a little more real. Beyond that, Jen’s parents didn’t really do the traditional vacation thing. The end result is that we Staycate in the summer. We like the occasional weekend trip to here or there, but we usually try to plan a vacation in the spring or fall when the weather is better and the people are fewer.

So, to review, my kids go on vacation in the spring or fall if they vacate at all, they’re going to be homeschooled, they have no idea how to eat like people, they’ll be learning their social skills from Social Anxiety Dad****, they don’t watch a lot of TV, and my oldest speaks more like a character from A.A. Milne than a real boy*****. In short, we have already failed our children for life in 21st-Century America, and they’re only a combined age of 6. We’ve got the rest of their lives to prepare them for time travel, I guess.

*Except we live in Virginia, so there’s, like, an extra month of hot on both sides of that span. I went to grad school in Georgia where it hit 87 degrees over the Thanksgiving holiday in November. My love for and pride in the South just has limits.

**Mercifully, there’s a nail salon called Queen Nails, else I think we’d still be there looking for that blasted Q.

***We live in America, so this is probably more like six or seven times heavier.

****This action figure is no longer sold in stores, but it came with a non-functioning phone it could hold to its ear to pretend to use in lieu of conversing with others, as well as a head that could only pivot downward to as to avoid making eye contact with passers-by.

*****When leaving swim class last week, Joshua dropped his lollipop on the locker room floor. When we got to the car, I found a lollipop there I’d gotten at the bank earlier. I handed it to him, and he replied, “I didn’t know you had such a thing about you!”

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/800/feed/0philosofikThe Weird Kidhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/the-weird-kid/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/the-weird-kid/#respondSat, 30 May 2015 12:17:29 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=802Kindergarten, well all of elementary school, really, is a pastiche of personality archetypes. This makes sense because all of the little pre-people haven’t really developed fully-rounded personalities, so they’re still modeling behaviors, and the most readily observed behaviors are the not-subtle ones. And so, every class has at least one of the following characters (and you’ll recognize them immediately):

The bully;

The bullied;

The rich kid (this one is the most relative of the lot; growing up in a rural county, the rich kid was the kid whose parents had the newest tractor);

The smelly kid;

The fat kid;

The kid who does ANYTHING on a dare;

And, of course, the weird kid.

We all know the weird kid. He’s that kid that speaks differently, about unusual topics, at length. He wears clothes that may or may not coordinate/look good together/make sense for the season or weather. He’s not especially interested what interests other kids. He’s just…different. Note that none of this is a judgement. I was the weird kid. I still remember a particularly cringe-worthy report I made to my seventh-grade class on Star Trek. In uniform. I know whereof I speak.

I don’t think any parents actively decide to raise a weird kid. “Pariah” is a tough sell on a college application. It just sort of happens. Jen and I recently concluded that we are raising the weird kid. Joshua, at five years old, is a weirdo. He’s our weirdo, so back off, but he’s still a weird kid. Let’s examine the evidence.

His favorite topic of discussion in all the world is letters. The alphabet in all its permutations fills a gigantic portion of his waking thoughts, and probably his dreams, too. He gets himself to sleep by singing* the ABC song a couple of times through before passing out for the evening. We talk about what letters do — not so much the sounds they make (we’re well past that in his world) as the activities they go about in their lives. The letters go to the zoo, they climb trees, and (my favorite), they hatch from eggs as lowercase letters. Of course. Joshua will spend a significant part of his day drawing letters doing Things. As I write this, Joshua has nearly completed a picture of Mom and Dad letters watching their eggs hatch. If this kid isn’t competing at Scripp’s in six or seven years, it won’t be for a lack of interest.

We formerly allowed him to get up to five time-outs in a day before being sent to bed early. Of his own initiative and without any prompting, he informed us that he should have fewer timeouts before running into this consequence. He and we have held that line ever since. He has yet to exceed it.

His bed is populated with stuffed animals. This is not, in itself, weird for a five-year old. What’s a bit weirder is the population density of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Joshua has seven Cliffords, and that’s not counting two that he gave to Jack. He has assigned descriptors to each in order to identify them: Big Clifford, Floppy Clifford, Tiny Clifford, Puppy Clifford (formerly Teeny-Tiny Clifford), Baby Clifford (also formerly called Teeny-Tiny Clifford**), Tiny Big Red Dog, and Teeny-Tiny Big Red Dog. These animals are, by his own admission and in point of fact, his best friends. But so numerous are they that, despite their lofty status in the pantheon of his friends, he routinely goes to bed with at least one of them missing, unbeknownst to him. In addition to these friends, he also has a stuffed zebra called Murray. Murray, from time-to-time and without provocation, changes his gender and goes by “Mary.” Joshua’s bed is an interesting place.

Despite being fully potty-trained, Joshua insists that someone stand outside the door to the bathroom in the house, even though he cannot observe that anyone is standing there, and does not make any attempt to verify it. But woe be unto you should you step away and not make it back by the time he comes out. The righteous fury of the five-year old is an awesome sight.

His conversational style is difficult to describe. The best word that I can come up with for it is, “Continual.” From the time he wakes up until the time he goes to sleep, he spews a more or less constant stream of chatter. This chatter is mostly in the form of proclamations made up of facts that Joshua knows about one thing or another. I’m told that, when intoxicated, I offer up lectures on everything from the Kings of England to the Fights Historical***, so I believe that Joshua comes by his particular brand of dialogue honestly. For example, when observing some geese and their goslings in our yard a few days ago, Joshua announced that goslings grow up to be geese but that they don’t start off as geese and instead hatch from eggs and turn into goslings before becoming geese and geese can also fly and swim and walk so they can go anywhere they want but no one knows what geese eat**** and is it snack time yet?

Speaking of snacks, his diet is, frankly, appalling. The time since he last ate a piece of fresh fruit or a vegetable can now be measured in years. I’m not counting french fries because they’re vegetables in the same way that pornography is television. His favorite food that’s actually food and not a kind of snack cracker is noodles. But should a noodle be called by its proper name, such as spaghetti or ramen or rigatoni, he will refuse to eat it until it is called by the name he has given it. Spaghetti is “long, straight noodles,” ramen goes by “long, curly noodles,” and rigatoni recently became “tubey noodles.” With the exception of ramen, all of these noodles are eaten with a heavy application of parmesan cheese and nothing else. There’s nothing especially weird about a kid being picky. There is, however, some weirdness about not eating something if you don’t like its name, even if you’ve eaten it many times before.

So yeah, Joshua’s weird. But it is an absolute delight to see his personality emerge from the haze of toddlerhood where one’s personality is basically defined as either preferring to build with blocks or to knock them over. Watching his personality crystallize has been the highlight of my adult life, right after getting married. And as Golly-Shucks as it sounds, I’m truly excited to see it continue to grow. And I’m at least a little curious to see how much weirder it will get.

*Even his “singing” is weird. He doesn’t put any vocalization behind it. He just whispers it in rhythm. When it isn’t weird, it’s a little creepy. Actually, come to think of it, it’s just both all the time.

**I don’t remember exactly when or how, but at some point the confusion surrounding two Cliffords sharing the same name became simply too much to handle for the boy.

***In order categorical, of course.

****This is un-true, but I was unable to penetrate Joshua’s verbal shield in order to provide him with this information.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/the-weird-kid/feed/0philosofikThree Scenes and a Time Warphttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/three-scenes-and-a-time-warp/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/three-scenes-and-a-time-warp/#respondSat, 09 May 2015 01:38:31 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=794A number of tasks I used to take for granted have experienced a time warp. I recall with a warm heart full of snuggles and fondness a time when I could do simple things like washing dishes or going to the grocery store in just the time it took to wash the dishes and go to the grocery store. But kids, man…

Friday is my big chore day. Joshua is a homebody FOR SERIOUS, and his favorite day is PJ Day, the one day a week when we let him wear his PJs all day and just chill at home. Since I’m trapped blessed to be at home all day with the boys, I make PJ Day my big chore day as well. Friday works well because I can get all of the chores done before Jen gets home for the weekend so she can just relax and not have to fret, at least not about laundry and such.

Doing chores with a toddler and a pre-schooler is a Test of Integrity. It tries a man’s soul in creative and unexpected ways. For starters, the task, let’s say washing dishes, is compounded in difficulty by the multi-tasking required. We have a dishwasher, and a nice one, at that. It’s extra quiet and, fortunately, comes with a lock so tiny fingers can’t change the settings mid-cycle and give my crusty pots and pans the light rinse they so badly need. But for the oddly-shaped and over-sized dishes, my knives, cutting board, etc., that’s some quality time at the sink with a sponge. And that’s all fine. Neither loading the dishwasher nor cleaning a handful of dishes in the sink is especially taxing. But the soundtrack is what does it. Close your eyes and imagine. Ok, don’t actually close your eyes, because you won’t be able to read. Just imagine with your eyes open, I guess, as I relate three true stories from the last few weeks.

Scene 1

[Dad is washing dishes at the sink. His children scurry about doing Who Knows What]

Joshua: Dad, can I have some chocolate milk?

Dad: You forgot to say please.

Jack: [indecipherable babbling]

Joshua: Please?

Jack: [more insistent babbling]

Dad: Ok, Joshua. Just let me finish washing this baking sheet and I’ll get it for you.

Joshua: But I’m thirsty!

Dad: I know, but in the time it takes me to clean my hands and pour your milk, I could just as easily —

[Jack walks forehead-first into the kitchen island and cries about his poor navigation skills]

Joshua: Dad, Jack’s crying!

Dad: Thank you, Joshua.

[end scene 1]

And let us consider now that trip to the grocery store. This is a task I used to enjoy. I would leisurely walk up and down the aisles, looking for inspiration for my burgeoning cooking skills. I’d stop to look at the different cuts of meat, to see what fresh fish sat cooling on the ice, to breathe deeply the warm olfactory pleasures wafting out of the bakery. Now, it is a different scene. Now there are pre-people in tow, and pre-people Want Things. In fact, that is their default state — wanting. They want this or that, they want attention, they want for independence. So, the trip to the grocery store becomes a lesson in tempering wants, a balancing of needs and budget, and guessing how long you have until your pre-people spool out of control and begin crying, knocking things over, or both.

Scene 2

[Dad carries Jack into the grocery store with one arm while holding Joshua’s hand with the other]

Jack: [excited and unintelligible exclamation while pointing in the general vicinity of many colorful items]

Dad: Those are groceries, Jack. Ok, Joshua, climb into the car, please.

[Dad selects a grocery cart with a child-size car on the front in which Joshua can ride. Dad places Jack into the upper portion of the cart to avoid Confrontations.]

Joshua: Don’t go yet!

Dad: Why not?

Joshua: I’m not buckled in! We can’t go if I’m not buckled in. It’s not safe!

Dad: You’re eight inches off the ground and traveling at two miles per hour. I think you’ll live.

Joshua: But I could get hurt!

[Dad buckles Joshua into the car while Jack inexplicably bends over and begins chewing on the handle of the shopping cart.]

Dad: All set?

Joshua: Can we get a free cookie?

Dad: Yes, when we get to the bakery.

[Dad pushes the cart to the bakery, conveniently located near the door.]

Joshua: I will pick which cookie.

Dad: There’s no picking to it, Joshua, they’re all the same.

[Dad points to a bowl of cookie fragments placed next to the counter. All are sugar cookies.]

Joshua: But I want to pick!

Dad: Ok.

[Joshua unbuckles himself and gets out.]

Dad: You can unbuckle yourself to get out but you can’t buckle yourself in?

Joshua: I can do both.

[Joshua picks a cookie fragment underneath many others, touching at least half a dozen cookies that he will not eat. He climbs back into the car. Dad gives a cookie fragment to Jack.]

Joshua: Can we get some goldfish?

Dad: When we get to that aisle, yes.

[Dad pushes the cart through the store. Both children are quiet while they eat their cookies. Thank you, Kroger.]

Dad: Ok, Joshua, what kind of goldfish crackers would you like?

Joshua: I will pick!

Dad: Please do.

[Joshua studiously compares two identical bags of crackers before choosing one and dropping it into the cart.]

Dad: Please put the other bag back on the shelf.

[Joshua puts the other bag on the shelf and knocks over several other bags adjacent to it. He laughs. More bags fall over as he rights the first bags. More laughter.]

[end scene 2]

And then there’s actual house cleaning. Or, if you’ve seen our house, thoughts about house cleaning. I know people who have pre-people of their own, and they somehow keep their homes both inviting and presentable. Our house, on the other hand, is the bastard child of a construction zone and 1990s Sarajevo. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I concede that while Jen and I both prefer a clean, spartan home, we never achieved such during our pre-pre-people days. So there’s context. The following scene (the last, I promise) took place last week as I attempted to excavate the dining room table.

Scene 3

[Dad sweats furiously and breathes heavily as he attempts to confirm the presence of a table in the dining room. Joshua colors with markers, and Jack is tearing the pages out of a magazine.]

Dad: Joshua, will you take the books on that chair back to your room?

Joshua: What books?

Dad: The books on the chair. Where I’m pointing. Right next to you.

Joshua: But it will take a long time!

Dad: No, it won’t. Just pick them up as one stack and carry them to your room.

[Jack toddles over with a glass bottle of marinade that he found in the Reading Nook. Dad takes it from him because he doesn’t want Jack marinated or cut with glass or both. Jack cries. Dad picks him up.]

Joshua: But they’re too heavy. My arms will fall off!

Dad: Your arms will not fall off.

Joshua: Yes, they will! I don’t want to break, and if I carry all the books, they will break me.

Dad: You’re not Rocky, and they’re not Drago. Just make a couple of trips, if you’re that worried about it.

[Jack has finally stopped crying. Dad puts him down.]

Joshua: But it will take a long time!

[Jack now bangs on the refrigerator door for milk. Dad walks to the kitchen to help.]

Dad: You’ve been on about this longer than it would have taken you to just carry the books to your room like I asked. I’m not talking about this any more. Take the books back to your room or get a time-out for not listening. I’ve asked you more than once.

[Joshua sullenly picks a single book from the top of the pile and carries it as if it were made of iron. Dad pours Jack’s milk and hands it to him before returning to the dig site. Joshua returns, unburdened, from his room.]

Joshua: Dad, is it snack time yet?

Dad: No. And you still haven’t taken the rest of the books to your room.

Joshua: But I’m hungry!

Dad: By the time you take the books back to your room, it will be snack time. Go.

Joshua: I’m too hungry to carry the books.

[A loud crash comes from the kitchen. Dad turns to see that Jack has pulled a saute pan off the island, knocking a pan lid to the floor in the process.]

Dad: And I’m too sober to deal with this. I’ll get your snack for you when the books are in your room. That’s the best deal you’re getting.

Joshua: Okay, okay.

[end scene 3]

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/three-scenes-and-a-time-warp/feed/0philosofikOnce U-pun An Allergyhttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/once-u-pun-an-allergy/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/once-u-pun-an-allergy/#commentsSat, 02 May 2015 01:57:52 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=787From my father I inherited, in addition to an appreciation of stomach-churning, eye-rolling, throw-up-in-your-mouth-a-little bad jokes, a sensitivity to anything entering my nose which is not air. Pollen, pet dander, dust, whatever gets kicked up when you mow grass — you name it. I remember the joy my dad took in mowing his lawn; I presume it was because he didn’t have to listen to anybody jabbering at him. I’m not sure there was a happier place for him than atop his riding mower in the heat of the summer (no one loved hot weather more than he did; he’d be perfectly content mowing grass on Mercury if the option existed). All of this juxtaposed curiously with his wheezing and coughing when he came inside, his allergies and asthma revolting against his love of the out of doors. I’m not much better, but I did escape the asthma, fortunately.

And now, to Joshua, I’ve given the same gift. Except he’s taken it further into life-threatening reactions. So far, I’ve not encountered anything that makes my throat swell shut and my face resemble Rocky’s at the end of Rocky, but Joshua has. One of my favorite foods, and one of life’s little delicacies — shellfish — makes my boy, shall we say, clam up?*

We first noticed Joshua’s reaction, and by “we” I mean Jen, to shrimp-flavored ramen. It was mild, but noticeable (to everyone but me). His second encounter was much more drastic. At a Chinese buffet, he sampled something called “Seafood Delight.”** Within a few minutes his face began to puff up. The final result that sent us to the doctor looked like this.

And this happened just from eating the regular fish that had been cooked with the shellfish and inadvertently touching his face. If he’d actually swallowed a shrimp, his reaction would be bad enough to have us all thinking, “This scampi happening.”

While this was his most severe reaction, it’s hardly his only one. He lives with a more-or-less continuous runny nose.*** His breathing is always a bit raspy. And this is just his body reacting to day-to-day life. He’s on Zyrtec now, but he’s previously tried a variety of anti-histamines which have been moderately effective. What he’s allergic to, we’re not sure. It seems to be either air or his family, as they’re the only things he’s around all the time. I guess if we ship him off somewhere away from us and his sinuses clear up, we’ll know. Better than drowning him, I suppose.

Unfortunately for him, his favorite animal in the world is a culprit as well — dogs. His grandparents have two dogs, and the instant we walk into their home, both Joshua and I experience the same reaction. Instant sneezing, coughing, difficulty breathing, watering eyes, and a general feeling of bleh. Cats, interestingly enough, don’t have any affect at all. We used to have a couple of cats here, including a long-haired cat, and we had no issues. I just don’t understand these dog-gone allergies.****

Even the poor boy’s skin seems resistant to life on planet Earth. He has a chronic and wickedly stubborn case of Eczema. We have tried every cream and ointment available over-the-counter and by prescription. The best of them keep The Itchies at bay, but still leave his skin feeling as dry as this joke:

Q: What’s brown and sticky?

A: A stick

For particularly nasty flare-ups, the doctor prescribed a potent little topical steroid. My ignorance of medicine made me think that my kid was going to Hulk Out and start power-lifting the furniture, but I was assured that that was a different kind of steroid. A guy can dream, though. Otherwise, we use whatever looks promising in the skin care section of the drug store.

I feel for the kid. My seasonal allergies are bad, but he’s got an allergy to Life itself. He’s never not reacting to something. We’ve changed detergents and fabrics. I’ve installed filters on the A/C that help to strain things out. We filter our water. Either none of it helps, or it all helps and we’ve never seen how bad it can be. Neither is reassuring.

Until very recently, we thought Jack had escaped this curse. He has no problems breathing, his skin is smooth and perfect. He hasn’t reacted to any food he’s tried. We really thought he’d be alright. At least until he needed an antibiotic which ended up giving him bright red hives. If one waits long enough, the other shoe always drops.*****

So, both our kids are gearing up for lifetimes of dodging bullets. Some are shaped like bottles of pink medicine, others are shaped like yummy yummy shrimp, but they’ll be fired at our kids in an endless onslaught. For my dad it was bees. For me… well, I haven’t figured out what will kill me, but it may or may not be latex. And now my kids have their silver bullets. Sorry, boys. Or maybe they’ll be alright. After all, if you shoot someone in the eye, you might not kill them. You might just give them Glock coma.

*Yes, I know that clams aren’t shellfish. Please re-read paragraph 1.

**While this title is perfectly appropriate at a seafood restaurant, most Chinese buffets tend to make it ironic.

***And that nose is a terrible roommate! Please re-read paragraph 1.

****Paragraph 1.

*****This phrase came from apartment living when you could hear one shoe hit the floor from your upstairs neighbor getting undressed, and then wait for the other shoe to drop as well. In an apartment in which I lived in grad school, I had a very different experience. Each night around midnight, I’d hear terrible noises, like they were operating printing press or a tool and die shop. The noises wouldn’t last for very long, but it’d be impossible to ignore or not notice them. One night, as I was stressed out near the end of the term, the noises started again and I snapped. I walked up the stairs, half-curious and half-furious about the noise. I pounded on the door to the apartment directly above my own. A slight woman opened the door, just wide enough that her Olive Oyl frame blocked my view into her apartment. I asked her to keep the noise down, that I was studying, that it was late, but I kept trying to see around her to know just what they were doing. She apologized politely and, I believe, sincerely. I thanked her and turned to leave. As I did, she turned as well and I saw, in a flash, that her apartment was nearly totally empty. There was a mattress on the floor, a laptop, and an old TV. I have no idea what made all those noises, but it sure as hell wasn’t her. I moved out of that apartment building at the end of the term.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/once-u-pun-an-allergy/feed/1philosofik8278973291_feba422a5b_zPair-entinghttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/pair-enting/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/pair-enting/#respondWed, 22 Apr 2015 05:28:25 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=784I’ve commented before that being a parent around non-parents is to weave a tapestry of lies about how glorious and rewarding it all is. And yes, there are some glorious, rewarding moments, absolutely. Hearing Joshua reading on his own is one of those. Seeing Jack finally figure out how to hold his own cup without us holding it like he’s a damn gerbil is another. But these moments are punctuation. They’re fleeting, however sumptuous. In between them are run-on sentences in which we, the parental protagonists, fight furiously against them, the bulwarks of the status quo, amid a maelstrom of kiddy stubbornness, resistance to change or challenge, unarticulated fears of having to Do for themselves, of not being ready, of failing.* You whip out one of those tales around a non-parent, and she’ll gladly amass more cats and call it a day.

The very first time I held Joshua was the antithesis of life flashing before your eyes in the moment before death. It happened in reverse for me. I saw a lifetime of happy memories I’d not yet remembered unspooling until I was old and mixing my drool with my iced tea and forgetting what pants are for.** There was mystery in the air, excitement mingling with fear and anxiety and promise in life’s ultimate emotional mixer. And so, when I got to hold Jack for the first time, I was ready for it all to run by me again. But it didn’t. There was no euphoric, time-traveling exhibition of all the wonders-to-be. There was simply nothing at all.

If the biggest thing parents don’t tell non-parents about is how truly terrible it is having a baby in the house, the second-biggest thing is that subsequent children affect you less. I’m not saying you love them less; hardly. I’m saying that all those moments of discovery that accompany your first-born’s every milestone are spoiled for all the other kids you have. I did not know my heart could feel the rush of joy and pride that it felt when Joshua said his first word. I had no idea how completely invested in the life of another person I’d allowed myself to become so that his accomplishments lit my nights like stars. Nor did I know what helplessness was until he received his first shots in my presence. I could not scoop him up fast enough, hold him tight enough, comfort him in any way. Seeing great big gobs of tears dash down his face broke my heart in a way that I thought could never be mended. All of that happened, and continues to happen as Joshua plows slowly but unceasingly through all of life’s developments. And Jack… poor Jack gets sloppy seconds.

I love my little boy, but I know he gets photographed less.*** This has a little to do with Joshua doing his level best to demand and absorb as much of my attention as there is to give. But it also has to do with a certain been-there-done-that attitude which is inescapable, however minimal. Again, this is not something parents really broadcast, because it’s all supposed to be magic from Kid #1 to Kid #8,**** but it’s there. And there’s guilt attached to it, too, because you know it’s supposed to be special. You remember it being special. And it is special. But not quite as much, and that makes you feel like a Terrible Parent, as if the failure of your hysterical mania about your first kid’s first step to transfer to your second kid’s first step means you don’t love both kids the same. It’s nonsense, but when your attention and emotions are being divided, these are the irrational worries that begin to populate your psyche. You also remember how crappy you were at division in elementary school (my wife not withstanding) and fear that this is now permanently screwing up both your kids and your arithmetic.

As I mentioned, Jack finally began holding his own cup just a couple of months ago. According to the books and websites, he was supposed to master this oft-overlooked life skill about a year before he actually did, but these things are marathons and not sprints, so finish lines are all you’re really worried about, or at least that’s what you tell yourself when your kid goes hands-free with his cup at the dinner table at sixteen months. When he finally got it, and actually meant it, we heaped praise on him as you’re supposed to, but it felt hollow. When Joshua accomplished things like that, I felt pride. When Jack did it, I just felt relieved that my right arm was going to be free for dining again.***** Obviously, I’m not telling my kids that. Rather I share it with strangers on the Internet, them being known for their compassion and open-minded reception to others’ thoughts and beliefs.

Of course, when kids are little, they’re a bit more formulaic, so much so that the aforementioned books and websites have rubrics and outlines and schedules for when certain abilities develop. It’s all shot to hell by the time they start growing a personality and interests of their own. Joshua’s five years old and his favorite thing on the planet is letters. So far, he knows the alphabets from three different languages, and he’s consuming them as quickly as we can learn/remember them to teach him. I do not and cannot expect Jack to follow his brother’s lead on this because, frankly, it’s an insane thing.

What excites me for Jack is that through this I can see the end of his second-class citizenry. He will, some day, be interested in something. He will stop being Kid #2 and start being Jack, whoever that ends up being. He and his brother will continue to compete for our attention and time, which would be perfectly normal, if not maddening. But they’ll be little pre-people with little pre-personalities, and I’ll get to stop feeling guilty because it will all be new again.

There. I knew if I wrote about it long enough I’d find a way to make parenting all about me.

*I know some things about run-on sentences.

**Caring for the elderly is basically like caring for young children, but with more Canasta.

***Part of this is because he, like me, is a ginger. Despite all the advancements in digital photography, there is still a certain animus between cameras and our kind.

****Kids 9 and up are always assumed to be unmagical. It is known.

*****I am bad-ass at eating soup left-handed now.

]]>https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/pair-enting/feed/0philosofikThe Sky is Full of Airplaneshttps://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/the-sky-is-full-of-airplanes/
https://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/the-sky-is-full-of-airplanes/#commentsWed, 01 Apr 2015 02:45:43 +0000http://philosofikdad.wordpress.com/?p=779I used to be a teacher. Well, I have two kids, so I guess I still am, but I’m really talking more about the gig with the paychecks. I taught middle school band. I did so briefly, but well. The school at which I taught was an inner city school, or at least as inner city as Southwest Virginia can offer. I worked with talented, motivated teachers who knew and loved their fields of study, who were passionate about filling kids’ minds with wisdom and their hearts with fire, and who enjoyed the full support of a principal committed to running a school whose kids would grow up to be Men and Women. And because of all of that, Jen and I will be homeschooling our kids.

Ok, really, I was just going for some shock value. It’s despite all that. See, the educators I worked with (and for) were truly terrific. But the system in which they worked — mandated by elected officials who couldn’t teach ice to melt — confined, constrained, restricted, reduced their teaching to scripted, rote memorization of the answers to whatever tests would happen next. There was no time for dialogue, and students coming into my band room in the days before standardized testing began looked older than their years. They might not comprehend the stakes for their school or their school district, nor how their responses to more than a week of testing could cost people jobs and affect the distribution of funding within the state’s schools. But they understood that their grades and even their matriculation depended on their performance. And as they came into my band room, they looked older than their 12 to 14 years, visibly aged by the stress.

Scientists can study the affects of stress on the human body forever and still not capture a full picture of it. It affects everything. Right down to my students’ tuning sharp on every note. See, with almost all middle school band students — musicians who’ve been playing, at most, two or three years — the tendency is to go flat. Their young bodies lack breath support and haven’t fully developed the cardiovascular stamina to sustain tones in pitch. And once those diaphragms start to quiver, as the lactic acid builds up in there, the air flows less forcefully and the pitch bends down. This is so common and so predictable that many band directors of these groups will intentionally tune their ensembles a bit sharp to begin a piece or concert, in the expectation that the pitch will drift down to where it ought to be by the time they get to the end. And yet. And yet. And yet, my pre-teen musicians, bearing preternatural stress, defied human physiology and grew sharper as their rehearsals went on. This just doesn’t happen. It just shouldn’t happen.

My oldest son will turn five this weekend, meaning Jen and I now have to decide, for realsies, whether he’ll go into public school or whether we’ll teach him at home. We can’t afford private school, so that’s out, especially when it comes time for our youngest to go into school as well. We toured the elementary school that Joshua would go into next year, hoping for, well, hope. We knew the numbers. They were accredited with warning for two years running, and all their scores were going in the wrong direction. Even that wouldn’t bother me if I knew that the faculty and staff had a plan. Unfortunately, their plan doubles down on remediation and reading, to the near-exclusion of everything else. Look, our kid can read already, a lack of confidence aside. He’s got the leg up now. We asked about enrichment, gifted, etc. at the school. The principal herself — and she’s a devoted worker, spending her weekends driving through the neighborhoods lending out books from the school’s library and her own collection — told us that there is nothing in place for advanced students. There is no mechanism to skip grades, no gifted program, no enrichment activities. The only thing is that, in her words, “the teachers are aware” of which kids are ahead of the curve. We saw the teachers, and we’ve seen the numbers. The teachers are fighting for the survival of their school. They don’t have time to carve out new programs for their advanced students because their other students are so far behind, it takes heroic efforts to get them to grade level in time for the next grade level.

It sickens us for a number of reasons. We moved here at least in part because the schools in our last town were awful. And, in fairness, they’re still worse than this. But we moved into the zone of the worst schools in a county with fantastic schools. A mile to the south, and we wouldn’t even question whether our kids would go into public school. That school is wonderful. But by a fluke of zip codes, here we are.

We didn’t realize how much we wanted our kids to go into public school until we realized that it would be the worst thing for them. I’m a defender and product of public schools. I believe in my bones that school is, or ought to be, the silver bullet for All The Problems. But the ability of parents, and even teachers, to effect change in schools has been reduced to the most nominal of efforts. The legislators have made us irrelevant and have effectively disenfranchised us from the operation and administration of our schools. We could put our kids into that school, bound and determined to be a force for change. Hell, we could even run for and get elected to the school board, but it would change nothing. So long as decisions are made somewhere else, Jen and I would be quixotic in trying to do anything more than run a bake sale.*

It’s a daunting prospect, assuming for yourself the complete education of another human being. The first five years are mostly grooming, hygiene, and manners. But when you start to think about the quadratic formula, diagramming sentences, the ATP-ADP Cycle, scoring in tennis, secondary and tertiary colors, the conjugation of regular Spanish verbs, Newton’s laws of motion… it all adds up to this huge, unassailable mountain of the accumulated knowledge of humanity. You feel inadequate, unprepared, and suddenly keenly aware of every grade you got in school, good and bad. You also still have no idea why zero is called “love” in tennis, even though you’ve looked it up, like, five times now.

There are packaged curricula for sale, some very highly regarded. There are homeschooling co-ops and support groups. There are online classes, thousands of books and magazines, conferences, and the vaguely-remembered notion that public education, as a concept, was basically non-existent as recently as the Civil War in some places in this country. In other words, while you might feel like you’re flying solo, the sky is full of airplanes.

Obviously, the decision to homeschool is situational. For some, it’s a religious imperative, but that’s not the case for us. Ours is purely wanting the best for our kids and realizing, sadly, that public school is no longer the best option.

*I make awesome baked goods, so I’m not totally discounting the efficacy of this.